What About My Human Rights?

The notion of "human rights" should not be a complicated one to understand, but in the priveleged society we find ourselves in, it's easy for people - especially having been fed falsehoods and exaggerations - to fail to understand quite how fundamental and crucial the rules laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are.

The rules governing essential human rights do not concern themselves with the things you read about in the newspaper. They advocate, encourage and enforce a system which provides dignity and a basic standard of physical, emotional, mental and societal welfare to the most vulnerable people in society, and to the rest of us as well. Some of these rules are ones that we in our comfortable countries wouldn't even think twice of - article 4, for example, which deals with slavery.

Others are immediately relevant to our culture and the narratives taking place in our country right now. Unfortunately, we don't always get it correct on rights concerning free speech and expression, freedom of religion, and the like: we seem to have forgotten about the former when it suits us (i.e. the woman on the tram you've probably seen by now) and filled in invisible gaps on the latter (i.e. when we support people's rights to wear jewellery just because it's shaped like a crucifix). When we screw up on these things, it's because we've forgotten why human rights exist.

But in our world of plenty (cue Band Aid) some people manage to convince themselves that any injustice they feel should be remedied by their "human rights", totally ignoring the essence of those rules. So no, there isn't a human right which makes your tax money go exactly the way you want it to. You don't have the human right to watch the man who murdered your daughter be lethally injected. These are not human rights. They're wishes. Send them to Jim'll fucking Fix It. Alternatively, your local MP. But stop weakening the backbone of a dignified society by comparing it with your petty fucking first world problems. It makes you look like a dick.